Shopify doubles down on B2B
Shopify released Q4 earnings with significant B2B focus. President Harley Finkelstein reported six consecutive quarters of 100% year-over-year gross merchandise growth in B2B, with Q4 showing 132% increase. The hosts noted this growth comes from a small base, with more success in the midmarket than enterprise. The company benefits from simplicity and lower costs. Meanwhile, Magento has created a power vacuum after being acquired by Adobe, with unclear direction in the market.
I called it years ago the Shopify-ification of B2B because the gravitational pull of the B2C-like solutions, especially on the pricing side, was dragging down the price of things.
Andy Hoar, Master B2B
The stakes of platform decisions
Technology platform decisions carry enormous risk. Gartner reports that 25 to 50% of large IT projects in ecommerce either fail outright or do not deliver expected ROI. McKinsey found that 50% of digital transformation leaders are fired or pushed out when major projects fail. One host shared replatforming twice in a single year early in his career, describing the disruption this causes to the business.
Why form buying committees
Companies form technology buying committees to reduce investment risk. The theory: cross-functional representation creates shared ownership, surfaces requirements from all stakeholders, speeds decision-making by involving decision makers upfront, and increases adoption once systems go live. If something goes wrong, accountability is distributed rather than falling on one leader.
The committee composition debate
Potential committee members include CIO, CTO, CFO, CEO, director of ecommerce, CMO, sales leadership, customer service, IT security, and operations. You could have a committee of 300 people. The question is not just who should be on the committee but what their roles should be. Equal authority and responsibility across all members leads to gridlock.
You can’t have everybody on it because then the process will grind to a halt and you’ll have least common denominator decision-making.
Andy Hoar, Master B2B
Practitioner perspectives
Dave Allen from Seager Electronics argued for an all-of-the-above approach. Rick Wingender, a fractional CMO, took the contrarian view: companies should use a smaller cross-functional SWAT team including a business leader, head of digital or ecommerce, finance partner, and technical lead. Customer care, sales, and operational voices matter but are implementation considerations rather than selection criteria.
The Congress model
The hosts compared effective committee structure to Congress: a smaller committee does due diligence, kicks the tires, asks tough questions, and makes customer reference calls. That group reports findings to a larger group for final decisions. You cannot have 25 people doing customer reference calls, but a smaller group can do the hard work and present recommendations.
Poll results surprise
A LinkedIn poll asked which non-digital functions are most important to include. Operations ranked highest at 40%, sales at 31%, marketing and finance tied at 14%. The hosts disagreed with operations ranking first. Operations is an implementation consideration. Sales must be involved early to prevent adoption resistance. Finance should participate to ensure ROI accountability from the start rather than questioning investments after the fact.
The missing CMO
Research found only about 33% of B2B companies had a CMO, compared to two-thirds of B2C companies. This marks a fundamental difference: B2B companies remain sales-led rather than customer-focused. Marketing often reports through sales as a support function. If the question is who should be on technology buying committees, many B2B companies do not even have a senior marketing voice available to participate.